PREPARING FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE

CHAPTER 9

"I hope it's Alpha Renwick," Tilda announced, hugging a pillow to her chest like it might overhear and get jealous. "He's got that jaw."

"He's got a wife, Tilda."

"Not yet, he doesn't."

"Not yet is doing a lot of work in that sentence." Mira threaded a needle, not looking up. "What about you, Elara? Any Alpha preferences, or are you still pretending you don't care?"

"I'm not pretending." Elara smoothed the fabric across her lap, focused entirely on the seam she was mending. "I genuinely don't care."

"You've re-hemmed that dress three times this week."

"Because it needed hemming three times."

"It needed hemming once. You keep finding new things wrong with it." Mira's mouth curved. "That's not indifference, Elara. That's a girl making sure her only decent dress is perfect for a ceremony she claims means nothing to her."

Across the room, Tilda and two other girls had moved on to arguing about hair braided crowns versus loose curls, whether silver ribbon was too obvious a nod to the Moonstone itself. Their voices rose and tangled, making the small servants' room feel, for once, less like a cell and more like something almost joyful.

"I'm attending because I petitioned to attend," Elara said. "That's all it is."

"You petitioned for three years and got refused for three years. Now the king himself overrules Bellamy, and suddenly you don't care whether you go?" Mira raised an eyebrow. "You care. You just won't say it."

"Saying it makes it real. If I say it and nothing happens, then I've said it for nothing."

"That's the saddest logic I've ever heard, and I watched you take a public scolding over a vase you didn't break without a single complaint."

Elara didn't answer.

Mira wasn't wrong. That was usually how their arguments went Mira circling closer to a truth Elara wasn't ready to admit until Elara stopped responding and let the silence answer for her.

"Hand it here," Mira said, tugging the dress from Elara's lap. "You're going to stitch yourself into it if I let you keep going. Let me finish the hem while you do the sleeve."

"I can do the hem."

"You've done the hem. Three times. Sleeve."

Elara surrendered the fabric with a small, reluctant smile and took up the sleeve instead, her needle moving through worn gray-blue cloth that had once belonged to her mother.

"What if nothing happens?" she asked quietly.

Mira glanced at her. "Then nothing happens, and you go back to scrubbing floors. At least you'll have stood in that temple once in your life instead of always hearing about it secondhand."

She returned to her stitching.

"But you don't actually think nothing's going to happen. Do you?"

"I don't have a wolf, Mira. The Moonstone reveals mates through the bond. I have nothing for it to find."

"That's not what I asked."

Elara's needle paused.

She thought of Yssa's voice in the empty healing wing.

It isn't absent. It's sealed.

She hadn't told anyone. Not even Mira.

"I don't know what I think," she admitted finally. "I've spent fifteen years being told exactly what I am. Wolfless. Broken. Nothing."

Her fingers tightened around the needle.

"It's easier to expect nothing than to hope for something and be reminded, in front of the entire court, exactly how wrong I was to hope at all."

"That's fair." Mira's voice softened. "But you're allowed to want it anyway."

Elara looked at her.

"Wanting something doesn't make you foolish."

Elara didn't answer.

She bent back over the sleeve, needle catching the worn fabric near the seam and then catching on something else.

Something stiff.

Something that shouldn't have been there.

"That's odd," she murmured.

"What is?"

"There's something in here."

Elara tugged gently.

The old seam gave way faster than expected. The fabric tore along a line that had clearly been stitched by hand long ago.

Something small slipped loose and landed in her lap.

Folded parchment.

Yellowed with age.

"What is that?" Mira leaned closer.

Elara didn't answer.

She was staring at the handwriting visible along the outer fold.

Small.

Slanted.

Achingly familiar.

She would have known that handwriting anywhere. She had spent years tracing it in the one surviving letter she kept hidden in a small chest at the foot of her bed.

"That's my mother's writing," she whispered.

Mira went still.

"Elara..."

"This dress was hers. Before it was mine." Elara's hands began to tremble. "She altered it for me herself. Years ago. Before..."

She stopped.

She didn't need to finish.

Mira knew exactly which before she meant.

"Why would she sew a letter into the lining?" Mira asked. "Why hide it there instead of giving it to you?"

"I don't know."

Elara's throat tightened.

"Unless she meant for someone else not to find it."

The other girls' laughter continued across the room, completely unaware that something had just changed in the quiet corner where Elara sat frozen with a fifteen-year-old secret trembling between her fingers.

Slowly, carefully, she unfolded the parchment.

The paper was soft with age. The ink had faded, but the handwriting remained unmistakable.

Her mother's hand.

As clear and familiar as if she'd written it yesterday instead of fifteen years ago.

Elara's eyes moved to the first line.

My daughter, if you are reading this, then the Moonstone has finally begun to awaken

A fist struck the door.

Hard.

Urgent.

Elara's entire body jerked.

"Elara!"

The voice was muffled through the wood but unmistakable.

Fear threaded through it.

"Open the door!"

Elara's hands moved before her mind caught up.

She folded the letter and pressed it beneath the dress in her lap, her heart slamming so hard she was certain everyone could hear it.

The knock came again.

Harder.

"Elara!"

She recognized the voice now.

She recognized that particular strain.

It was the kind of voice that only ever meant one thing in this palace.

Something had gone wrong.